DVD Review: ‘Slow West’
★★★★☆ There are two types of western: those that build up the myth of the Old West – Rio Bravo (1959), The Searchers (1956), Shane (1953) – and those that break it – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Poe’s Black Cats’
★★★★☆ Edgar Allan Poe’s famous short story The Black Cat has been adapted in almost every era of cinema, from Universal’s two classic offerings ‘suggested’ by Poe’s tale to Roger Corman’s Tales of Terror (1962) and Dario Argento’s 1990 version, […]
Film Review: ‘The Nightmare’
★★☆☆☆ Sleep paralysis – a condition whereby sufferers wake in the night to find themselves helplessly paralysed, overwhelmed with an impression of a nearby malign force – is both a terrifying experience for its victims, and a recurring concept in […]
Blu-ray Review: ‘Otto Preminger Noir Collection’
★★★★★ Alongside Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, and John Huston, Otto Preminger was one of the most influential film noir directors in Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s. This new collection by the BFI gives us three of his finest works, […]
DVD Review: ‘Big Game’
★★★☆☆ “This is not a good idea.” Uttered around the halfway mark by Samuel L. Jackson’s nonplussed President William Moore, this neatly summarises the thesis of Jalmari Helander’s Big Game (2014), an imperfect but enjoyable mixture of McTiernan-esque violence, Bruckheimer-esque […]